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She had already gone downstairs and Carlton was in the bathroom, shaving, and so she took the call, wondering nervously if a flood of incomprehensible Spanish was going to meet her ears. 'Hello? This is Katie Reef.' The name was still strange on her tongue. 'Can I help you?'
'Katie?' Joseph's voice was strained and tight 'I have to talk to Carlton; is he there?'
'Yes, of course, I'll just get him.' She put the receiver to one side and ran quickly up the open, winding stairs that led to the first floor of the villa, her heart thudding as her senses recognised the note of distress and panic in Joseph's voice. What now?
Carlton turned as she entered the bathroom and, as always, her heart went haywire at the sight of him. He was stripped to the waist with just a pair of jeans covering his lower half, and his muscled chest with its light covering of dark body-hair was bronzed and powerful in the light-coloured bathroom. 'Was that the phone I heard?'
'It's Joe,' she said breathlessly as her eyes drank him in.
'Joe?' His eyes narrowed as he shook his head. 'You don't mean to say he's calling us on the first week of—'
'There's some sort of trouble, I think,' she said quickly. 'He seemed upset, Carlton.' Even as she spoke he reached for a towel and wiped the shaving-foam from his face, pushing past her and running down the stairs, Katie following at his heels.
'Joe?' His voice was anxious. 'What's wrong?' He listened for a few moments in silence and then barked a particularly explicit oath down the phone that made Katie jump. 'Why the hell did you let her?' he growled angrily. 'What's the matter with you, anyway?' There followed a few more terse sentences that Katie couldn't make head or tail of, although she gleaned enough to realise that Carlton was furiously angry with his brother, and as he banged the phone down and turned towards her she saw that his face was black with rage.
'The young fool. The stupid, blind young fool,' he muttered grimly. 'If anything's happened to her—'
'What has happened?' she asked softly as a terrible sense of foreboding rose like a thick cloud over the magic of the last few days.
'It's Maisie.' As his eyes focused on her face she saw the deep concern and her heart began to pound like an express train. 'She's left the house, disappeared in the middle of the night.'
'In the middle of the night?' She had heard the expression of blood turning to ice but it was the first time she had experienced it.
'She could be anywhere considering the state Joe says she was in.' He ran a hand distractedly through his hair. 'There was no need for this, no need at all. What on earth was Joe thinking of?'
'You can't blame this on Joe!' She was suddenly furiously, fiercely angry, her rage so intense that it swept away every other emotion in its path. So the lovely brunette was his mistress and she hadn't been able to stand by and see him married to another woman. She felt sick with impotent fury. What was he doing, playing with all their lives like this? Just who did he think he was?
'You don't understand.' His voice was preoccupied, absent, and the final humiliation was that he was looking through her as though she weren't there. 'Joe—'
'Oh, yes, I do,' she said tightly. 'I'm not a fool, Carlton, and I understand far more than you think. I do have a pair of eyes in my head, you know.' Her blood was pounding in her ears but her eyes were as dry as dust.
'You know?' he asked as he seemed to force himself to concentrate on her. 'Did Joe tell you?'
'No.' She didn't know where this strength that kept her upright was coining from but she was more than thankful for it. 'I just put two and two together—'
'Joe was supposed to put things right,' Carlton muttered as he walked past her as though he hadn't heard her. 'She must have been in a damn awful state to clear out like that. Hell, he promised me—'
'He promised you?' She was shrieking now, all control gone as the absolute unfairness of it
all made her quite literally see red. He had left Joseph to do his dirty work, placate his mistress while he played his games thousands of miles away, and now, it having gone all wrong, he was laying the blame on the younger man's shoulders? 'I don't believe I'm hearing this.'
'You don't believe you're hearing what?' The pitch of her voice had got through to him and he turned with his foot on the first step of the stairs and glanced across at her. 'What the hell is the matter with you anyway?'
'What do you think is the matter with me?' she asked furiously.
'I don't know, Katie; that's why I'm asking you.' If she had been rational she would have noticed that he had gone curiously still, his dark eyes intent on her face and his voice low and controlled, but she was too mad to observe the subtle body language and the sudden awareness in the smoky grey eyes that narrowed with disbelief at his own suspicions.
'You expect me to just stand by and say nothing,' she asked incredulously, 'while you panic about where your mistress has gone?'
'My what?' And then she realised, as she stared into his face which had gone as white as a sheet, his eyes glittering with a fury that surpassed her own, that she had made a terrible, unforgivable mistake.
CHAPTER NINE
'You think Maisie is my mistress?' Carlton asked with a deadly quietness that was more lethal than any roar of rage. 'You've been thinking that all along?'
'I…' Katie's voice faltered and died at the look on his face. 'It seemed like that; I—' She shook her head as she searched for words. 'You were always so nice to her… You—' Her words strangled in her throat. 'You were kind, gentle…'
'And because those attributes are so alien in me, so unnatural, the only conclusion that you could draw was that if I was nice to anyone I was sleeping with her?' he asked softly. 'I'm such an animal in your eyes, so abnormal that I can't feel friendship or warmth or any of the normal human emotions that the rest of the human race takes for granted?'
